#he's such a comfort character to draw his smile could cure depression

[lunargarden-art]

"you'll slay the ladies with your smile!" *proceeds to smile

[soyforramen]

Whoops, I slipped into a follow up of this prompt.

--

“How’s the wrist?”

Such an innocuous question. It rings flat in the sharp crags that line the chasm between them, echoing hollowly between them. But it’s still more than he’d said Saturday night. More than he thought he’d say.

Betty, never one to let any pain shine through, smiles at him. Her face morphs into that perfect Cooper mask, no crack or wrinkle to suggest anything was out of the ordinary. It pierces his soul to realize that he doesn’t know how to read her anymore.

To him, she looks just as happy and carefree as the first day they’d met in third grade.

“Still sore, but no lasting damage,” she says, rolling her wrist as proof. Even her voice is peppy and varnished to perfection. “How’s your head?”

His hand moves without thought to his forehead, his fingertips grazing the ugly red mess. Jughead jerks his head to the right, a move practiced in the mirror this morning to ensure his hair covered the welt.

“Nothing an aspirin can’t take care of,” he mutters.

He raises his coffee cup to his lips to keep from mentioning the whisky and rye he’d fallen headfirst into, a palliative cure after she’d disappeared up the stairs, leaving nothing but confusion and nadir in her wake. The lingering hangover was still a symphony of banging pots and pans along his temples, a never-ending reminder of his regret (relief?) of doing nothing.

They sip their coffee in silence, waiting for the meeting to begin. The artificial bridge he’d thrown across the chasm between them frays, its tethers loosening. In less than a minute, it’s fallen into the yawning black hole that now lies between them.

Betty's words… no. Not that. It was his inaction. His confusion. His uncertainty that created this false rift between them. The gravity of it tugging and pulling at every second between them, every atom, every conceivable future between them, each a warped, stretched snapshot of a future never to be.

It was enough to make him want to crawl back into the bottle and never come out again. His hand shakes, an aftereffect of the late night drinking, and he shoves it deep into his pocket. Betty’s eyebrows draw too close together, too close to concern for his tastes.

Toni claps her hands together, and Betty shoots him one last curious look. He refuses to look at her, turning to refill his mug. When he turns back around, Betty is in her usual seat next to Archie, a plastic smile on her face. Jughead slouches against the counter, too lost in his own morbid thoughts to pay much attention to the upcoming game to notice the increasingly concerned glances Betty sends his way.

Jughead watches as his students shuffle in, the twins he affectionately calls Bill and Ted the only two showing any trace of life. The bell rings, a clanging, offensive noise that makes everyone wince. It’s doubtful he’s the only one nursing a hangover.

“How many of you did the reading?” he asks when they settle in.

A collective groan ripples throughout the room. He can’t blame them; he’d never been able to finish The Odyssey in high school either.

“Pop quiz time,” he says.

Another groan, this time with a rousing argument against it, echoes through his already pounding head. Jughead holds his hands up in a conciliatory gesture.

“I want you to write about betrayal.”

The class quiets, some exchanging glances. It’s a sharp turn, a quick 180 that throws all off them off balance. Jughead has been ruthless so far, both in his grading and in his push to get them to learn critical thinking skills. Even he’s surprised at this course of action.

“Any kind of betrayal you can think of. You can talk about personal betrayal, family betrayal. Maybe one of your friends kissed your girlfriend, or maybe your mother chose your sister’s side over yours. Or maybe you write about a fictional betrayal. Hamlet and Ophelia, Brutus and Julius Caesar, Edward Pensieve and the Turkish delight.”

Wynnie’s hand shoots up, and Jughead inwardly winces. She’s always been the one to push back against any assignment, the one who questions everything he expects from them and makes class ten times longer.

“Can we write about a made up betrayal? With characters on, like, TV or something?”

Breathing a sigh of relief, he nods. “Anything is fair game, as long as you write it in a way that someone not familiar with the show, or book, or whatever, can understand what’s going on.”

“What about poetry?” another student asks.

“So long as you put the effort in, poetry is fine. Text threads, short stories, poems, letters, anything written.”

“Can we work together?” one of the twins asks.

“Sure, as long as you don’t bother the other students,” Jughead says with a shrug.

Bill and Ted high five before dragging their desks together.

Jughead is surprised at how well they’re taking this assignment. Every last thing has been a fight with them, from getting their attention to taking a test. Betrayal, though, seems to be something everyone can relate to.

As the class begins to write, Jughead sits down at his own desk. For a moment, he watches his students, kids in the same position he was once in, and wonders why he’s even here. Riverdale offered him little more than characters he could mold into his own, a setting for the decline of small town America.

Today, though, his mind wanders along words and phrases, glimpses into a different sort of reality. One ravaged by decay and rot, left to perish alone. And yet, he can’t help but see the small, green shoots of the future poke out of the ashes, tiny hints of hope for what’s to come. Perhaps nothing is ever static and unchanging. Perhaps things can turn around.

Jughead reaches into his bag for his own blank notebook.

He’s sitting on the porch that afternoon, struggling with the illegibly written translation. It’s a shame the state requires them to teach only the recommended books; Jughead would love to see how the story unfolds when thrown onto a fire.

“Hey.”

Jughead starts. When he sees it’s only Betty (only?), he stands abruptly, his entire body on fire, his legs jittery and ready to run.

“Hey,” he repeats. “Archie’s not here, but –“

Betty shakes her head and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “Can we talk?”

He swallows. Stupid of him to think he’d get away from this conversation. Jughead waves to the chair next to him. As Betty passes, her perfume tickles his nose. Long gone is the strawberry body spray she used in high school, a sweet, cloying smell. Now it’s a perfume, one that tickles his nose and clogs his sinuses.

They sit there quietly, neither willing to speak first. He’s lost for words, unable to start.

She sits patiently, calmly. Betty seems as if she hasn’t a care in the world, as if they were there to talk about the weather. Part of her training, he realizes. She’s no longer as impulsive as she once was, reaching and grasping and desperate for an immediate answer. This Betty Cooper is a reminder of the past, but only that.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, starting with the simplest of things.

Next to him, Betty shifts. He thinks he hears her sniffle (crying? allergies? derision at his lame start?), and he has to quash his immediately reaction. All he wants to do is reach out to her, to comfort her, to promise her the world to keep her from suffering.

But he’d done that before, long ago, in a completely different world. And he’d been trod upon, brushed aside in favor of her own cruel form of betrayal. Nothing he could have done after would have fixed the wound she’d carved in his soul. Even now, seven years distanced from the teenage woes, it lay between them, still raw and sore and bleeding from the continued betrayals of his life.

He wonders how he would have responded to her if he hadn’t known. If he hadn’t come home one night early to hear her and Archie upstairs. If he hadn’t turned to the Wyrm and listened to Sweet Peas acidic sniping just to get lost among the agave pinas and the juniper berries.

“It’s not,” he stutters, trying to find his footing, unsure of what he wants to say. “I couldn’t stop loving the Betty Cooper I knew. But I also never stopped hating what she did to me.”

The admission is the first emotionally honest thing he’s said in years. It’s painful to realize how deep it lay inside him, how long it took to finally cut out this festering, putrid thing that burrowed into him. Like a tumor, it could only grow, fed by hate and anger and depression. Hate and anger for both of them. It hadn’t turned out like it was supposed to.

Now that it lay out in the open between them, he felt different. Heavier, in some ways. But there was also a release. The pressure that had been building for so long was slowly lowering, as if he’d finally found the valve that would bring things back to normal.

“And I don’t know you,” he said, the words pouring out now. “Seven years, and only a handful of texts, a few voicemails. You’re not the person I remember. Hell, everyone is different from who they were, who I thought they were.”

He pauses to run a hand through his hair. He can feel Betty’s bright eyes staring at him, pleading with him for something, anything, that will make this better.

“We’re both different now, and there’s no way you can still love me. You don’t know me, you know who I was. We can’t just pick up where we left off, even if we wanted to. There’s too much between… Even if we were stupid enough to try,” he trails off, his words meandering as they try to find footing in the rocky space between them.

“We didn’t leave things in a good place,” Betty murmurs in agreement.

She shifts, and he looks at her for the first time since they sat down. Her legs are tucked up against her body, arms wrapped around them. It’s a protective stance. Against him, perhaps, or against the bare truth that he’s put in the open. He can’t blame her, not since he’s protected himself against most of his own life in other, less healthy ways.

Jughead sighs, empty of anything else to say. He stares at the fading light glowing through the leaves. It’s the perfect, picturesque scene of two high school sweethearts reuniting. At least, it was supposed to be. He didn’t know if he ever could do that to himself again.

Archie’s old truck chugs up the street, and Jughead stands. He scrapes the palms of his free hand along his pants, the other hand gripping his book. Archie waves through the windshield with a bright grin, and Jughead gives a half-hearted wave back before going inside.

He’s exhausted; after being mad for so long, it’s strange to be so empty of feeling. He’d give the world to be able to retreat back to Alphabet City and it’s various loan sharks. There, at least, he’d know the pain was no one’s fault but his own.

Jughead closes the bedroom door behind him, shutting out the rest of the world. It wasn’t his business what Betty did despite her attempts to bring him back into her life. He didn’t know if he was ready for that, or if he’d ever be. Ever since he’d been back, her presence gnaws at him, chipping away at the walls he’d built up over the years against her presence, and it frightens him that she’s stepped back into his thoughts so quickly and easily.

Thoughts and ideas collide and churn violently in his head. He throws himself down on his bed, determined to fall asleep despite the chaos.

But this time, sleep doesn’t come as easily as it always has. Words and feelings and phrases splatter against the back of his eyelids, graffiti tattooing images of a world never known. He pushes back against the cacophony until he can stand it no longer. Desperate to empty his thoughts, Jughead turns on the bedside lamp, pulls his laptop out from under the bed, and begins to write more than he’s been able to for years.

[luciehercndale]

Nothing Makes Sense Anymore

Yesterday I was listening to this song which gives the title to this one shot and I was inspired to write this story. It is about the feeling of loss you feel when someone dies or disappears, the anxiety about not being able to see them anymore, to talk to them anymore. It made me think about Will and Jem and how they deal with each other’s loss, and also how Tessa is the only constant in both of their lives, in different times of their lives. I hope this isn’t too depressive but I was in the mood to write something like this.

Relationship/Characters: Will Herondale, Jem Carstairs, Tessa Gray, Herongraystairs, Wessa, Jessa POVs: Will and Jem’s Rating: T TW: death, depression Background Music/Inspiration: Nothing Makes Sense by Mike Shinoda

Will 1878: 21 Long Days Later

 Nothing makes sense anymore.

It takes 21 days to form a habit, but Will Herondale still hadn’t got used to Jem Carstairs being gone. He hadn’t died, but he was still gone from the places they shared together, from the table they shared to eat their dinner, from the sofa they shared to laugh about this or that, from the bed where he used to lie when he was ill and Will was tending to him. Gone was the pale color of his mane, the faint but vivid hue of his irises, the joy of his smile that he always gifted him despite his body was collapsing. Jem had words of reassurance for him even if he did make no sense sometimes.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

Still, even if his whole life up until that moment had been a whirlwind of strong emotions that he kept hidden and of people he tried to push away, the only constant in his existence had been Jem. His greatest sin. The only person who made his world make sense, the true north, the flame that couldn’t be put out. The light which guided him home whenever he was lost, but also the comfort he sought when he felt emotionally drained because he had to pretend to hate others.

He had put up walls, but Jem had destroyed them.

He had hated himself for what he did, but Jem had loved him more.

As Will stared at the small waves of the Thames in front of him at midnight, he wished he would just have the strength to saunter to the river bank and drown in his sorrows. He was already drowning, after all. Nothing made sense in his life, he had lost his compass. He was lost, it wouldn’t have been bizarre if he had…

No.

He glanced at his right side, where he would be if he didn’t have to leave.

It was empty.

Vacant, just like his heart. If he had to be honest, his heart was not vacant, it was full of bottled emotions ready to explode, to wound him, to cut him, to break him. Twenty-one days ago, a part of his soul was carved out of his heart. It still scorched, but scars are also a remainder experiences, of people. He would not forget Jem, nor Jem would forget him. They would still be linked for eternity, until they would both leave this world and meet in the afterlife, where they could be together. If there was an afterlife, but he decided that it existed.

He touched his chest, right where the rune of his never-ending friendship with Jem was. His love for Jem wouldn’t fade, despite their parabatai rune was white as a scar on his heart. He opened his shirt to check that he hadn’t dreamed about this, that Jem had been real and that he wasn’t his imagination who was playing tricks on him.

“It’s still here,” he murmured to the river, assuring himself that it was indeed reality. And then he broke down in tears, desperate because he couldn’t be with him. He was there but also not there. It comforted him, but it also made him desperate because he couldn’t spend his days and nights with him by his side.

Nobody would take Jem’s side.

“Will.”

He froze but he didn’t stop weeping, but now it was tears mixing with laughter. “I think I’m imagining voices,” he said directed to the river. “I lost the light of reason.” But then the only person who always went where he and Jem went, where he now went alone, filled the void by his side, and made him see things from a different perspective.

Jem’s place would stay vacant, but the other side wouldn’t.

The only person who understood what it meant to lose him would fill his other side, and she would be bound to him by drawing the marriage rune on the same place where the faint parabatai one once was. The person who Jem also loved, and in which his affection also reflected.

He gazed at her with eyes devoid of life, but full of emotion. “Tess, I… I want to be alone.”

“Well, I don’t,” she replied, her eyes as glassy as his, hurrying by his left side. “Want to tell me about the time you met Jem? You’ve never told me about it.”

Will’s heart would shatter with feelings of loss and love but he would comply, and they would laugh or cry at what he had just said.

That was how they tried to cope with the fact that Jem had to become a Silent Brother in order to save his life. That is how Will and Tessa coped with loss, knowing that what mattered the most was that Jem couldn’t be with them, but he was still alive. That, despite he couldn’t be all the time with them as they wished, he was still breathing. They could still see him, he would still be there when their children would grace this world, until it would be Will’s time to leave them. His time, however, would be final.

21 grams was also the weight of a soul. Jem and Tessa felt the loss of balance when Will left them, and their worlds would never be the same.

 Jem 2007: 70 Long Springs Later

Seventy years. Almost the age he had when he left them, Jem thought as he stared at London from Blackfriars Bridge. He had been there at least once a year, for his annual meeting with Tessa, and things didn’t seem different except they had changed drastically. At least from his perspective. He could still fell the imbalance and void in his existence, the idle spot where he used to be whenever they fought together in battle. He could still see the mark that linked them on his shoulder, but to an onlooker, the area was bare, the scar barely visible. But still there, still present.

People’s life span isn’t long. In the 150 years he had been alive, he had seen things change, people getting old and leaving this world, places decay, turning into the ghosts of what they once were.

Ghosts.

He couldn’t see ghosts, but he knew that they existed. And they were around them, protecting them like an invisible mantle, a coat of tenderness, of everlasting devotion. Anyone would think he was mad to think ghosts were part of their world too, but Tessa would not. She would believe that his ghost had crossed the bridge to the afterlife but he was still very present in their essence. In their memories, in their love, in their journey.

It was the crack of dawn, too early for pedestrians to walk on the bridge and maybe even for ghosts to appear, had he been able to see them. It was the time he preferred because the city was quieter and he could go undisturbed to remind himself of his first life, of his life before the one he had just left, of the life before he became a Silent Brother.

The first life where the third missing piece of his current life had been with him. The one who had made his first life feel more valuable, gave it more meaning than what he would have had if their paths hadn’t crossed. If he had kept his feelings to himself and drowned in depression. The one who would go out in the middle of the night whenever he had a withdrawal and he was out of his poison, which was also his cure. The one who would stay by his bed to keep his hand warm and his forehead covered by a cool cloth to make his temperature go down, or would risk his life to save his frail one without batting an eye when he was too weak to wield a sword.

Will had been part of Jem’s second life as a Silent Brother. He had made it colorful, fiery, vibrant. As a Brother, the light, the joy, the emotions were denied to him, but through Will and through Tessa, he had experienced a chromatic life, which helped him endure his new reality dressed in anonymous parchment colored gear.

Will had also had children who had been equally important to Jem, who had reminded him who he was and… He passed a hand through his now black hair remembering when Will informed him that his first son would be named after him. “I can have a piece of you even when you’re not here,” he had told him with pride, and James had turned out to be a great person who loved profoundly just like his parents. Lucie, their second daughter who had Tessa’s lovely features, had also lighted his life. Jem never told them what Lucie did when she was sixteen, and when they found out they were worried sick, but they never blamed him for not telling them what their daughter was risking. He just wanted the people he loved the most to be safe. He would guarantee them that he would continue doing that for the following generations.

His view of the river few feet below blurred. He hadn’t realized that he was crying until he wiped his face with the back of his hand. Seventy years had passed since his parabatai had left this world, but he was a mess after every visit to London, still longing for Will’s presence. He knew that he had to be there, somewhere close. He felt his shoulder warm, as if someone had an arm around him to wrap him in a comfortable feeling of homeliness. Shadowhunters believed in ghosts, Will could see ghosts himself, and even if Jem wasn’t able to do it, he was sure he wasn’t alone.

“It’s okay to cry.”

It was Tessa. She was by his side, looking at the same view he was contemplating. In the years following Will’s death he had only met Tessa in sparse occasions. She had decided to leave that city because she couldn’t bear his loss and then the war broke, and they couldn’t properly meet the way they wanted to. After all, they still had each other.

This year, seventy years after their world broke apart, he had been cured, and there wasn’t anything stopping them to be together every day like they had wished to do when Jem was still 17. When he was dying. He knew that he had survived because of Will’s and Tessa’s love for him even when he became a Silent Brother. He wasn’t a Silent Brother anymore now, he was just Jem, and by his side there was still Tessa, the only constant in his life who was also a reminder of Will, the only person who had loved his parabatai the same way he also loved him, and the same way they both loved him right now, after seventy long years.

“Seeing London every year still moves me,” Jem commented as the sun was about to rise higher in the sky before them. “But this time is different, because I’m seeing London as myself. As Jem. It reminds me of when me and Will used to sit on the ledges of bridges around town when we were patrolling the streets at night.”

“Tell me more about it,” said Tessa with a smile.

He nodded and managed a grin and he would indulge in her request. He could still feel the warmth around them as he recalled hilarious experiences with his parabatai. He decided to recollect only the happy memories on this anniversary, because Will wouldn’t want them to be sad, even if he wasn’t physically with them.

Even when he exhaled his last breath, he had told them that he wanted them to hold onto each other, just like Jem had done when he became a Silent Brother. His disappearance from this world just meant that he was going somewhere incorporeal, but they would still live, their hearts would still beat. They couldn’t lose sight of each other or they would lose their minds, even if he couldn’t be with them anymore.

The soft spring breeze was blowing and it embraced their huddled figures next to the bridge. They would still have time before crossing that bridge to go to Will, whose presence was still resounding around them, a ghostly presence, especially there in London where he had lived most of his life.

When the morning sun was glowing far above the clear skies and he had told her about the past, Jem felt the need of asking something to her.

“If we ever have a daughter, can we call her Wilhelmina?”

Tessa turned to him and watched him with a pensive expression, still lost in the stories they had just shared on the bridge. She smiled fondly and she nodded. “You don’t even have to ask.”

In that moment, Jem realized that even if Will was not there, they would still remember him every day, he and Tessa. She was, after all, the thread that had made their bound stronger, the only constant in both of their lives. This made life worth living, despite their lives wouldn’t be the same until they would be able to finally reach the place where Will was.

Until then.

[andidrewrose]

And I drew roses

      Andrew Rose

Information 

Name : Andrew Cole

Surname : Courtenay Rose

Nickname : Andy, Drew

Title : Earl of Carlisle

Age : 20 years old, coming for his 21st

Nationality: British

Sexual orientation : Bisexual

Activities : Painting, drawing, fencing, horse riding, reading, learning

House : Napoleon

Major : Psychology

Year : 3rd

Story

Andrew was born in England, to a white wealthy earl father and a black British-Caribbean mother. 

He has an older sister who is studying politics at Oxford, and a little brother who is still in high school.

He grew up in their family mansion located in a town in the countryside. Until he was height.

He accidentally killed his father in the woods during an archery practice when he was eight years old. 

Their neighbours accused his mother for the crime, became very racists towards what was left of this family, forcing the Courtenays to move from town. They ended up in a town called Whitney.

When his father died, they lost most of the family’s incomes and everyone tried to suck money out of them in every way they could. Their status went from very wealthy to high middle class. 

His father’s mother didn’t really want to help the daughter-in-law she never liked, but she loved her grandchildren and offered to pay for their education if she could see them regularly. 

When going to their grandma’s, which was a whole floor of the castle she ran, Andrew used to take fencing lessons and do some horse riding, along with going to parties. With his grandmother could have a taste of the aristocracy life he missed when he killed his father. 

He was desperate to quit England for any other country. With the advice of his mother and grandmother he chose Astor Academy to learn psychology. (full story at the end)

Facts 

Due to the big trauma he endured as a child, Andrew has been struggling with mental health his whole life. 

He draws and paints since the accident. He also started doing graffiti when he was a teenager. This is one of his way of coping. 

His grandmother sells his paintings to her friends and to some amateurs by exposing them in her castle. 

One of his recurrent pattern in his paintings are red dots, a vivid image from the accident.

 One unhealthy way was drugs, when he was in high school. He finally realized it wasn’t what he needed when coming to Astor Academy.

His real drug is danger, despair, and the adrenaline that comes with it. He realized he only felt alive when he was facing his death. 

Psychology is his major because he has a history with psychologist and psychiatrists and he feel like he needs to help other children like him. He wants to specialize in Child Psychology. 

He has a british accent.

He took his mother’s name when enlisting for Astor, as a way to let this tragedy and a part of himself behind him.

No one knows that he killed his father. And doesn’t want to tell anybody.

Character

Most of the time, Andrew is pretty chill. He likes to hang out with people, without being too outgoing. 

In a group, he won’t be the most talkative one, but he will never miss an opportunity to make a sarcastic comment. As youngsters say, he is “fluent in sarcasm”. 

He likes to tease his friends, making them laugh and laughing with them.

He will gladly play along with someone’s prank or act.

He makes sure to always compliment his friends when they do something that needs complimenting, for their work, their outfit, their ideas, their good actions...

He’s not easy to anger, but he can be easily annoyed.

He is very good-mannered and polite. His “posh” vibes are always fighting with his “hooligan” vibes. 

He doesn’t want anyone to know he has a title and that he comes from aristocracy. He tells everyone he’s from an average rich family. 

When it comes to him, his feelings and his past, he’s very secretive. Which can make him look like he’s being mysterious. 

If he is going through a depressed phase, he can be very moody.

If you get him on a topic that he has strong opinions or that he is passionate about, he would gladly talk hours about it. 

He takes his studies seriously, and even if he likes to go out, you will often see him in the library or his room studying. 

/tw : sh\ Though he doesn’t harm himself anymore, he is drawn to self-harming situations, aka dangerous ones. He will seek a way to make himself pay for what he did. 

Interpretation of the character based on the information given on the skeletons (one paragraph):

Made-up confidence. Perfect appearance. Wit and sarcasm. His smile can charm but, no matter how good he is at controlling everything about himself, attempting to reach for the boy he was, his eyes don’t fool anyone. Truth is, Andrew has never really been well since the incident. He has rarely felt alive at all. Seeking comfort in everything he could, alcohol, drugs, sex... Anything that may cover the void. But all of this didn’t do it for him. Numbing himself away from reality never really was the solution, even if he was convinced it was, for a moment back in high school. But the emptiness was still there. No, he realized this was not his cure. In order to feel alive, he had to feel like he was pushing himself to the edge of death. Waking his brain the fuck up. Tricking it into thinking he was going to die, so he could have access to this primitive part of his brain, survival mode, that made him feel so alive. Challenge. Danger. Fear. Adrenaline. Desperate hope. However, one who doesn’t really know him couldn’t guess this side of him. He seems so charming and sweet...

His only healthy way of copying mechanism is art. Painting. Graffiti tags. Leaving a permanent mark. One that cannot be erased so easily. Greater than oneself. At the end, the final result is the history of every line you made. Either if you meant to trace it or not.

History (give your chosen character a brief background):

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. His life. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

He was — is — the son of an English earl. Growing up in a respectable family, in the mansion in this lovely english town, with his sister and brother, his parents, the grandparents and cousins never too far away. It should have been a pretty, happy, privileged life.

Living far from the stress and pollution of the city, in a rich town where you grow up with the same people and create unbreakable bonds that will last forever after you all part ways and when you meet, five, ten years later, the friendship and camaraderie never faded away, and you talk about the good old days and how simple were things before. Getting every luxury you would have feel like wanting to have, affording every trip, every piece of clothing, every jewelry, every unnecessary whim. Getting the best education of the country, with special individual teachers, piano, violin, french, german, horse riding, boxing, fencing lessons. Getting into Eton. Not having to bother to acknowledge the price of anything. Having the possibility to do everything you fucking want because money and status can repay for everything, because money can buy everything, and everyone. Meeting the elite of the nation in splendorous parties and gatherings. Being beautiful, handsome and resplendent. Envied. Desired. Feeling powerful and invincible.

But none of this happened to Andrew. Not to his sister, or his brother. All because of him. He is responsible for so many of his family’s problems. And it has always been a burden he had to carry alone. And a fucking big one.

His father died when he was eight. Colin Courtenay was a British noble and business man. He came from a rich family and intended to make his family even richer. He had ambition. He was well respected amongst his peers. He was at the head of a big fortune and when he unexpectedly died, the mess that came as the aftermath was a nightmare.

Colin’s wife, Andrew’s mother, Sarah Courtenay, was already devastated enough by her loss, but she had to bear the accusations that were made against her. This was a little town, and gossip and rumors are the pillars of its life. People knew that Sarah did not came from a family as rich as her husband’s, quite the contrary even, and family’s friends and others would have heard that the couple wasn’t the happiest at the moment. But this was more than gossip, this was real accusations. People in town would accuse her of commanding the murder of her husband. She hired someone to kill her husband in the woods so she would inherit his fortune and title for her son, Andrew. They would spit it at her, along some racist slur directed at her and her children, especially Andrew. From one day to the other, the all town was revealing its true nature. People they considered as friends were turning against them. The harassment wouldn’t stop. They couldn’t live here anymore. They had to get away. All because of him. The thing is, Andrew was responsible for his father’s death.

They first went to some land that was his father’s. But they had to move from there quickly too when the news got to the villagers’ hears. Colin’s mother was also trying to legally take back all her son’s land and wealth, she never trusted her daughter-in-law. She tried to keep the children with her too, but Sarah would never let go of them.

So they quickly moved into a house in Whitney. Sarah, who graduated from college with a science degree, had to find a job, something she hadn’t done since she married Colin. Colin’s investors and associates were stealing money where they could. They threatened her to frame her for her husband’s murder if she tried to take legal actions against them.

Sarah spent years and years fighting for her and her children’s well-being. She was a single mother that came from a poor family from Saint-Vincent, and her husband wasn’t here anymore to protect her, all the rich vultures were trying to have a piece of this meal.

Andrew had to watch her mother’s life, all of their lives, go to ruins. Because of one thing he did.

Her mother and grand parents fed him lies. It’s not your fault honey, it’s not your fault. Maybe they meant it. Or they were better liars than his siblings. The way his sister looked at him was speaking for itself. She saw everything. 

Their father’s mother would eventually help them. Only because she still loved her grandchildren and demanded to see them when she pleased. She would in exchange pay their education and teach them how to run her castle and the domain once she will be gone. Even in his grandmother Andrew could feel resentment towards his person.

The boy just wanted to run away from all this.

He tried building himself a new life in Whitney, new friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. But growing up messed up, biracial and bisexual in a group of uneducated boys, he quickly came to conclusion that nothing will ever be normal again, especially not him.

He sought for a way out. And when he found it, he took it. That’s how he ended up studying psychology in America.

The topic of the change of his last name has been brought many time by him to his mother, so people wouldn’t link them to the drama. She considered it more than once, but never went through. She wanted to claim their belonging to this family and her husband’s memory. However, Andrew made his own decision and took his mother’s name when coming to America. A fresh start. 

[avidfanficwriter]

Two Drunken Fools (Chapter 3)

Characters: Tony Stark x OFC.

Warnings:Cursing, Alcoholism, depression, suicidal-ness(?) (I’m blanking the word), Smut, Pain, Will update as chapters arrive. Honestly, it’s messy. SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR AND ENDGAME

Ratings: M.

Summary: When Tony fought Thanos, he thought that was as bad as it could get. He’d walk away with a bruised ego, a stab wound and the kid in tote. It didn’t end like that, it never does for Tony Stark. His world fell. The kid’s gone, Pepper’s gone and he’s in dire need of help but refuse to let anyone know that. Instead he cures it the only way he knows how: booze and seclusion. Until he discovers he shares shocking similarities with someone else whose curing their own pain the same way.

The third visit from Tony Stark is even more unexpected than the first two times, it's been an entire month since his last visit and Wren hadn't expected to see him again considering their last interaction.

It was late in the afternoon when the sun is threatening to rest for the day and the sounds of wildlife become replaced with insects while Wren works tirelessly on another piece of jewelry, a piece for a husband whose wife had disappeared. His request was simple, a bracelet with his wife's name engraved and the date of their marriage below it. The task should be quick but her previous project had put her right against the deadline, the previous customer had requested a drawing of mickey mouse's face on a heart. With no particular skill in the arts area of life, Wren had resorted to tracing the picture and ended up wasting more material than she would have liked too. This one returns her to the simplicity that was jewelry making. Wren finishes the last consonant of the woman's name when the sound of an engine roars through the woods, startling her. At first, she assumes it's just a trick of her mind that she misses talking to someone since nothing follows afterwards. There is no obnoxious rev of the engine as Tony pulls into the driveway or the sounds of gravel crunching beneath his feet as he walks to the driveway. It's quiet. Her focus returns to the piece in her hand, gently wiping the shreds of metal off the small band. The silence is once again interrupted by the sound of a car door slamming.

She stands, discarding the jewelry and rushes to the front of the house, quickly opening the door to meet Tony whose approaching the patio. The tips of her fingers nudge against the screen door in front of her but Wren pauses before pushing it open. Tony's appearance hasn't changed at all, not that she expected it to, he's dressed in a long sleeve novelty band t-shirt, dark blue jeans with his hair unstyled and his facial hair in more need of trimming than before. He has a large brown bag in one hand and a case of beer in his other hand.

"Hi." Wren says in a quiet whisper.

"Hi." Tony responds standing in front of the patio steps.

"I didn't expect you to see you again."

"I wasn't planning on coming back." He confesses with a small smile.

Wren gives him a small nod and chews on her lower lip. "What did you bring today?"

Tony smiles, walking up the last step and standing just inches away from the screen that separates them. "A parting gift." He holds up the brown bag, "I hope you like tequila."

"No scotch?"

"Next visit." He winks.

"There's going to be a next?"

"Unless you don't want there to be."

"I didn't say that." Wren pulls the door open, leaning against the screen to hold it still. "How about we see how this goes before we start talking about next time? I like to keep my options open."

"Thought it was doors?" He asks cocking his head.

"Those too." She is quick to clarify. "Tony Stark, please come into my humble abode." She offers motioning for him to enter.

Tony walks inside the house, letting out a small sigh as he takes in the warmth. "Where do you want this?" He asks when Wren closes the front door behind them with a small thud and walks towards him.

"Coffee table as always."

"I've never seen your house." He says walking into the small living room and places the objects on the glass tabletop. "i've been here three times and have only seen the living room and kitchen."

"There's a reason for that." Wren says, grabbing a red blanket off of the couch before Tony takes up his usual residence on it.

"Which is?" Tony asks, taking the opportunity to look around the house for the first time. It's quaint, a few pieces stick out to him that he thinks Steve would be attracted to but there's a modern touch littered throughout. Her couch is in dire need of replacing, multiple spots on it are torn and sewn up with no expertise to hide the quick fix. She has an assortment of blankets he notices, the few times he's been here, there's been a different one resting on the couch. The kitchen table and coffee table he's noticed always seem to have items spread across it, usually one is dedicated to tools and the other to papers. She has a pair of running shoes that sit next to the front door and she usually has a discarded coffee mug that sits on the kitchen counter half full of coffee. The rest of the house is a mystery. there's a bedroom or office to the right of the house and another to the left.

"When do I get a tour of your place?" She asks arching an eyebrow with a sly smile.

Tony shakes his head and sits down on the couch, quickly opening the case of beer and pulling out two bottles while Wren sits on the loveseat in front of him wrapping the blanket around herself. "You're welcome for the beer." Tony says changing the subject.

"Thank you for the beer, Tony." She says with a smile.

Wren stretches out on the loveseat, propping her legs over the arm rest and exhales loudly. Her green eyes look out the large window behind her she watches the leaves from the tree float to the ground. It's the beginning of winter, the air is growing crisp and the leaves are making their escapes. This winter is going to be bad, the mornings are cold and the nights are even colder, soon enough the snow will fall and everything will turn white.

"Why do you drink?" Tony asks interrupting the silence they've found.

"What?"

"Why do you drink?" He repeats.

She snorts and turns to face him, "Why do you drink?" She asks with accusing eyes.

"I asked you first."

There's another round of silence before Wren speaks, there's no use in lying to him, she's a nobody compared to him. He wouldn't gain anything more than knowledge based off her sharing the truth. "To forget." She confesses.

"Do you?"

There is a breathy chuckle before her response, "Not really." Her head falls back, eyes tracing patterns in the ceiling. "I use to think, just one more, one more and soon it'll stop, you know? This--whatever it is will finally give me a break and just... stop. I don't even know why I'm so caught up on it anyway, I'm mourning someone who cheated on me." Tony wants to inquire further but like she has done for him, he lets her share what she wants. "God, can we open that tequila? If I'm going to be drifting down memory lane then I need something harder and stronger than beer in my system."

"Have I been volunteered to partake in that session?" Tony asks leaning forward and pushing the brown bag towards the edge of the table where Wren can reach it.

"That's what we use each other for, isn't it?" She asks piercing her eyebrow as she looks at him, cockeyed. "You drive out here, some beer in tote and we confess our deepest darkest secrets to each other."

"Is that what we do?"

"I'm sorry, I've had a few drinks today..." She concedes as Tony's eyes glance at the beer nestled in her hand. "Aside from this one. I can be a mean drunk. Today is a bad day."

Tony nods with a chuckle, "Must be why we get along, I tend to be a careless one."

"You, careless?" She asks accusingly.

"You, mean?" He asks matching her tone.

They stare at each other, both waiting to see who will be the first to speak or even move. It's a dangerous game they are playing but neither are known for backing down even more so when alcohol is involved.

Silence is a defining characteristic when describing the relationship between Wren and Tony. They talk, say a lot in little time and say little over long periods of silence. It would make most people uncomfortable but for them it's comforting. Silence is easier to navigate then stretch of questions that all need answers the second after they're asked. For them, they can wait and be at peace simply listening to the sounds of the other breathing.

"Why is today a bad day?" Tony questions after watching Wren take another gulp of tequila.

Wren forces a humorless chuckle past her lips, "It's stupid shit."

"Such as?"

"Two years ago, today was my anniversary."

"I didn't know you were married." Tony has read through her file a few times, more than is socially acceptable but he's positive there was no mention of a husband.

"I wasn't... thankfully." She sighs heavily. "He missed our anniversary," She swallows hard. " he forgot about it, which should have been my first clue. He said he'd make it up to me. I believed him. He was good, sweet and we were okay. The months that followed were weird, he was distant. Then... when it all was happening, I came home from work walked in on him and my best friend getting to know one another a little better." She scoffs, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "It's really funny, when you think about it. The world was fighting to survive and I come home worried because he wasn't answering his phone and discover he's perfectly safe fucking my best friend." Tony exhales deeply, distractly lifting the bottle to his lips. "By the time, I got back to work, it all happened and they both were taken."

"Both?"

"Yep." She pops the 'p' with a playful smile, hiding the pain she really feels. A trick Tony knows far to well.

Tony sighs, "He left you to suffer, huh?"

"It would seem so." She sniffles and adjusts her blanket. "Is it wrong that I'm glad they're gone? That he's gone?" Tony swallows nervously, he's not the best person to ask this question to. "I think if he hadn't I would have gone back to him even seeing what he did."

"Back to him?" He raises an eyebrow, confusion deep in his voice.

Wren smiles and nods, "Probably."

"Why?"

"Because I did some pretty stupid stuff after everyone disappeared." She shrugs her shoulders.

An hour of silence passes as they drink the rest of the tequila and have came to the silent agreement to share the last bottle of beer. The world outside of Wren's home was starting to turn in for the night, the once blue sky had turned black while stars began appearing. Crickets chirped and the sweet songs from birds began to quiet. Snow was going to fall soon, she could tell, the sky was always a shade darker when it was going to snow. The living room had a soft yellow glow from a small lamp in the corner of the room, next to her bookcase that Tony has noticed is filled with multiple genres of books ranging from fiction to nonfiction with recipe books and self help books.

Wren's abandoned the chair and somehow ended up on the floor with a small throw pillow beneath her head and the blanket lazily resting on top of her. Tony is laying on the couch now, one leg propped on the back of the couch and one of his arms is hanging off the edge making his knuckles scrap along the carpet.

It's nine o'clock when their last beer is gone, most of it due to him when Tony breaks the silence with soft gasp.  "Do you think they knew?" He asks tears in his eyes and sorrow in his chest. God, he misses Pepper.

"What?" Wren asks with her eyes closed on the cusp of falling asleep.

"When he... Do you think everyone he took knew what was happening?""

"For their sake, I hope not."

"Someone I knew, someone I let down... I think they knew what was happening." Tony says in a breathless whisper remembering the last moments he spent with Peter, how the boy's eccentric behavior drastically changed. He wrapped his arms around Tony and pleaded for help. Tony remembers it like it was yesterday, the fear nestled in Peter's eyes and the acceptance in his voice as he knew death was coming for him.

"Were you there?" She asks her voice slightly hitched. "With them as it happened?"

"Yeah." He says quietly. "Until the end."

"They just... Slipped through your fingers. Almost like you couldn't hold onto them tight enough." Wren lets out a deep breathe. "Then you wait for it to take you and it never did."

"Yeah." Tony whispers in a broken voice "I hoped he would have killed me."

Wren lets out a painful chuckle, "The world doesn't kill those of us who want it too..." It's the darkest thing she's said in front of Tony, the alcohol and the longing for sleep is to blame. "When we're too weak to do it ourselves, the world doesn't take pity on us. It'd rather we suffer."

Tony silently agrees, rubbing his eyes and sighing. "I almost did it." He confesses a little to happily. "After he left, I was in that ship, dying and I thought it would be so easy to just let it happen or help it come sooner."

"What changed?"

"I thought she'd be here." There's a crack in his voice that he tried desperately to hide. "I stayed... I lived for her."

"Wish you would have chosen the other option?"

"Everyday." Tony answers quickly.  

"Me too."

Tony slowly sits up, holding a hand to his head as he adjusts to the new position. He's drank a lot more than he realized. "Is that why you live out here in the middle of nowhere alone?"

"Part of the reason." Wren acknowledges with a half attempt at a shrug. "Is that why you locked yourself up away from society?" She questions him, turning her head to look at him.

"Yes." He answers without missing a beat.

"Quite a pair we are." A sarcastic undertone is evident in her voice as she tosses the beer bottle towards the table with a loud thud. "Do you think that's all that's left of the world? People who are barely getting by? Pieces of who they once were?"

"Not for everyone." He thinks back to the security feeds the days he saw Steve, the only man on the planet who seems to be perfectly fine with everything that's happened. He smiles and goes about his day like nothing happened, he's happy. "Some of us were luckier than others.'

"Lucky bastards." Wren says through gritted teeth. She lets out a loud groan as she rises to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the floor and releases a groan as she stretches her muscles. "I need coffee, do you need coffee?"

"Yes, please."

"Coffee it is." She says abruptly walking to the kitchen and accidently kicks a discarded bottle one of them left on the floor.

Wren quickly gets to work in the kitchen, sparring a few minutes to adjust to the sudden bright light that burned her retinas after switched the light on. She was trying to remain quiet her head is spinning with comments that she's desperate to ask, they've gotten into dark territory that revealed truths about one another, she wasn't planning on sharing. She glanced over her shoulder as she started the coffee pot, the room filled with the sounds of water dripping into the glass pitcher, Tony's still on the couch, clutching his head in his hands. The alcohol is taking it's toll on both of them, no food and a belly full of alcohol was making itself known.

"What are these?" She hears from Tony while standing on the tips of her toes to reach two mugs from the cabinet.

"Uh..." She slowly turns, resting the mugs on the counter behind her. He's moved. Quietly so. Tony is now hovering over her kitchen/work table, his hands buried deep in his pockets. "work."

"Work?" He says with confusion.

"Yeah, I needed a source of income after I was let go."

"These... these are great." He comments, picking a necklace into his hands. There's simple chains on some, gold and silver. Others that are beaded and jeweled but each is crafted with such beauty and care.

"Thanks..." She whispers with confidence slipping from her voice. She quickly turns around, pouring the hot coffee into the mugs and brings both mugs towards Tony who's still admiring her work. His brown eyes trace each mark, each line she's created and the marks from her tools. "Here you go."

Tony takes the light blue mug from her hand and takes a sip, groaning as the hot liquid flows down his throat. Wren watches him as he continues to admire the jewelry, he trails his index finger along a few finished pieces and gives a small smile. His hands are gentle, lightly grazing the metal plates. "This is... beautiful." He corrects his earlier statement. He grips the leather band for the few bracelets she's created, swiping his thumb along the silver plate that has another victim's name engraved in it.

Wren sighs heavily, the bracelet he held was for a child, a boy who was five and was excited to start kindergarten, loved trucks and wanted to be a police officer when he grew up and now he was gone. The mother requested the bracelet be dyed red, his favorite color. Her eyes follow the length of Tony's bare arm, he must have discarded his long sleeve shirt while she made the coffee, she looks towards the couch but her eyes are quickly pulled back by the light grey t-shirt he's wearing. It's the first time she's noticed it or the lack of it, there is no blunt ridge in the center of his chest. The chest piece she's seen plastered on children's costumes or novelty t-shirts is absent.

"You got rid of your..." She abruptly stops, catching her lower lip between her teeth. She can't mention Iron Man, she can't. He wanted to talk to someone who didn't know him before this, if she brought up Iron Man it could have a less than pleasant effect on their friendship? If they had a friendship? Were they friends? Was getting drunk all hours of the day, then not speaking until he showed up a few days after with more beer in tote considered a friendship?

Tony's eyes meet hers as he lets the bracelet fall from his fingers back onto the wooden table. "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing... nevermind." She holds her hand out, quickly shaking her head and drinks her coffee before another ill advised comment makes its way out.

"Thank you." Tony blurts out after a heavy silence.

Wren smiles. "It's just coffee."

"No, for..." He looks up, staring directly into her eyes. "listening. For talking. Everyone always wants you to just move on."

"Or give you their opinion on how to better yourself." She rolls her eyes at the comment, their 'friends' who all think they have the answers to life's problems.

Tony silently agrees, "Everyone else always knows best." He says with a smirk.

"That they do." She agrees sarcastically.

Something comes over Tony in that moment, something he can't explain or understand but he's suddenly leaning forward, placing the mug on the table and brushing his lips over hers. He can taste the coffee on her lips and feel the steam from the mug she's tightly holding in between them. Lips move slowly, like he's--like they're testing the waters, both unsure of how to react to this moment.

She parts, pulling away from him causing her coffee to spill on her sock clad feet. She hisses in pain and forces out a low, "Fuck."

Fuck, is exactly the thing that's filling Tony's mind.

Two versions of it actually.

The first where he wants to bend Wren over the counter and take her roughly from behind.

The other where he can't believe he wants to do that. He shouldn't want that. He's in love with Pepper. This thought was wrong. He's devoted, committed and was almost engaged to Pepper.

Wren's moved again, tossing her stained socks down the hallway he's never been privy to walk down. She's avoiding his eyes. She's avoiding him actually.

"I have to go." Tony doesn't wait for a response or even look at her for a goodbye, he simply leaves. Abandoning his t-shirt on the couch and rushing out of the house.

He's running from her and from his other brain that is desperately trying to convince him to turn around and take her to bed.

He pulls over on the side of the road, an hour into his drive, he has a perfect view of the city here. He has his cell phone in his hands, his finger dancing over the on button. It's been months since he's started it. With no service there was no reason for it no but it was habit that he slipped it into his pocket. The phone vibrates as he slips his index finger off the small button, it gets him... Friday greets him actually.

Her soft Irish accent sharing how happy it is to see him again. She's ignored. He has other business. He swipes past the homescreen and array of untouched apps until he finds the one labeled gallery, a blank Polaroid as the icon picture.

Pictures.

He scroll mindlessly until he finds the one he wants, the one he always admired whenever he was away. The picture was taken when she was asleep, he'd woken that night from a nightmare but as he looked over the sight stole his breathe and the dream with it. Pepper, his Pepper was sound asleep, one arm nestled beneath her head, the other stretched out on his thigh. Her blonde hair was sprawled along her face but it only highlighted her beauty. The picture was taken and he never let it go. It brought him comfort and curled the ache when he missed her.

It wasn't now.

"God, I'm sorry." He says in a whimper. His throat stings. "I should have been there. I was suppose to be there." His heart hurts. "You'd fucking hate me. You probably hate me." Tony doesn't believe in God, maybe his father is to blame for that. Howard believed and his mother believed but when Tony was old enough to ask questions, as children eventually do, Howard wasn't having it. He screamed and berated Tony, 'while under my roof you'll believe." Since then Tony refused to acknowledge religion, any aspects of it were nonexistent to him. His refusal of it was only heightened by his life, his mother dying, the great Captain America coming back to life, the wormhole, Ultron, Pepper leaving him; Bucky Barnes murdering his mother and then this. What a God force this upon someone?

Only now, he hoped it was real.

Tony wished more than anything that at least one aspect of it was real, Heaven. Those pearly white gates with fluffy white clouds where people had halos and dressed in long white robes. He wants her to be there, drinking poolside talking to some cabana boy as she sips on a glass of champagne.

He wants her happy. Even if she finds happiness away from him. If hating him makes her happy.

If she's watching down on him with a smile on her face as she takes pride in his pain. She'd hate him. That much is clear. He deserves this. He left her, he promised he'd protect her and instead of doing that, he let her die.

Tony sobs. His chest heaves and his throat burns as he mourns her. His everything. He hates himself and he hates the world. He doesn't deserve to live but he doesn't deserve to die, he wouldn't get to Heaven. He has has too much blood on his hands, years creating weapons that killed innocent people, his reign as Iron Man that resulted in lives being lost, Sokovia... Letting the world down. No God would allow him entry. He'd be welcomed straight into the bowels of Hell with the devil meeting his eye and a sinister smile on his face.

It's what he deserves to be tortured for his failure.

[eleanor-robinson]

Writing, in the Tunnel of Terror

In my writing group, I have the company of two other writers. Wonderful, creative and dedicated writers. I enjoy their company hugely; their support means the world. Yet, I feel as though I am not on the same journey as them. They both write quite prolifically and have been writing for a few years. They are older than me, they have careers. Of course, I’m sure there are things I don’t know, and everyone carries their own struggles, but lately my self-comparison demon has been flaring up.

I have been feeling a lot of shame over the last few weeks—shame that I can’t write as quickly as them; shame that I can’t seem to dedicate myself to my story like they can. I’ve felt weak, and like a failure. When I sat down to think about how my writing process has been going, and to take stock of the things that have been going on in my life, I realised that its no wonder I haven’t been able to get stuck into my novel. The truth is that I’ve been going through a journey of my own, and you can’t really compare a rollercoaster to a bus. Or in my case, a boat ride.

I don’t feel remotely “settled” in any aspect of my life at the moment. For this whole summer, I have felt like I’m on the Tunnel of Terror boat ride at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory—the surreal and disturbing version from the 1970s film. I’m doing my best just to cling onto the damn boat and not get thrown overboard into the chocolate river.

Last Sunday.

I came out to my Dad as Nonbinary on Sunday. Well, I tried to. He gave me a hefty kick back into the closet.

It was the evening, just me and Dad at home. I came into the living room, where my Dad was watching the golf on telly. I sat next to him and gave him a hug. He could see I was upset, so he asked me what was up.

I had a choice then—do I dare be honest with him? Or do I pretend there’s something else wrong? Could I be honest with him? At first, I pretended I was nervous about starting my new job. But it didn’t sit right with me. I decided to do it. I’ve practised it enough times in my head to know exactly what to say—

I don’t really feel like I have a gender at all. I’ve realised I’m not as attached to womanhood as I thought I was, being constantly gendered at work this year made me feel uncomfortable and confused. I don’t know what to call myself anymore. I’ve thought about using Mx instead of Ms as a title at my new job, but that scares me too. I emailed the new school about it but I got the sense that it wasn’t really possible, so I agreed to go by Ms, which feels safer and more comfortable to me anyway. Its been a stressful and confusing time.

Dad was silent, he didn’t take his eyes off the golf. When he spoke, his voice was tense—

What are you saying? You want a sex change to become a man? What are you trying to prove? You were the girliest little girl I know. You liked sitting inside, colouring, writing stories, doing crafts. Why are you making life hard for yourself? There’s always something with you. Just when we thought you were getting settled down. Your generation are just jumping onto bandwagon after bandwagon. I already have to tiptoe around you in case I’m accidently sexist and now there’s this. I mean for God’s sake. This isn’t normal. This isn’t what normal people do.

After a little back and forth that was mostly me saying the same things, and him saying the same things, I went upstairs and cried into my pillow. I hadn’t even managed to utter the word Nonbinary to him.

After a while, I heard my mum come home. Mum already knows, I trust her, she isn’t judgemental and has been helping me work through my feelings. I comforted myself with the thought that at least I have one ally; at least I have one parent who is accepting. That’s better than what some people get.

My mum came into my room and sat on my bed. He thinks you want to become a man, she said. It would have been funny, but I feel too wounded.

That’s not what I said, that’s not what I meant.  

He doesn’t understand. He’s very old-fashioned. He is going to get dragged, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century whether he likes it or not. She strokes my hair. Take your time, just be yourself.

­­­­­­­­­­Even later on, Dad came into my room, with my mum. He tried to make up with me, in his own, back-handed way— I’m sorry I was grumpy, I just feel like you’re making your life harder for yourself.

I’m one of the kids on the boat in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, with my notebook open, but its too dark to see my writing, and water keeps splashing the pages and ruining the ink, and its not Willy Wonka sitting at the front of the boat, but my Dad speaking judgemental words into my ear. He is supposed to be the one sat next to me, protecting me. I couldn’t articulate to him then that its not me making my life hard, but him.

Last Monday.

The next day, I wake up anxious and full of thoughts. I have had a night of anxiety fuelled dreams filled with characters from my past, people I’ve let down or are simply not in my life anymore and I miss. I force myself out of bed. I do my yoga, I do my meditation, I do my morning pages, I eat my sensible porridge (because I read once that oats are a superfood for curing depression). It’s all mechanical—I am hoping these things will bring some relief. However, all the while, I am scraping at myself, raking myself in search of answers. What is my gender? How can I make myself palatable? How can I fix this? It’s hard to stop. I feel like I have scraped the barrel of my soul and at this point I’m just drawing blood. I know in theory that how other people react to me isn’t my burden, but the wound of rejection throbs. I shower and get ready to meet a friend.

After charity shopping with my friend, we stop for a pint after. She’s known me for a decade, throughout various ups and downs. She can tell something is up and asks me what’s wrong. I tear up. I don’t want to freak you out. She reassures me she won’t be freaked out, so I tell her the whole awful story. I haven’t even told her about being Nonbinary before.

She holds my hand and listens. She’s kind.   She doesn’t judge me. She reassures me. She says she loves me. She doesn’t reject me.

At the end, she says It’s exciting really and smiles.

Today, Saturday, later in the week.

Things with my dad will get better. He can tell I’m hurt, and he is being extra nice to me. He thinks his reaction doesn’t matter because he got the wring end of the stick and I don’t actually want to become a man.  He doesn’t realise that his reaction completely crushed me and made me feel like if I was anything other than woman he’d reject me. We’ve been talking about it a bit more here and there, but he still thinks I am needlessly making my life unbearable.

I simply am who I am—and the world makes it hard for me to do that. As an LGBTQ+ person, denying who you are feels no less comfortable than being who you are in a homophobic and transphobic world. With staying hidden, you have overwhelming feelings of guilt, self-denial and fear, of carrying a great secret burden, of feeling trapped, with no one to talk to. With being open, you have fear how of people react to you, of being discriminated against, of being rejected and hate-crimed, of never finding love. Of course, it’s not like there are just two paths, its a spectrum, and coming out is a life-long task. Also, there are positives to each one too. With staying hidden, you have more physical safety, control and time to process. With being out, you feel free to express yourself completely, even if it is terrifying. Of course, some people are “outed” and are robbed of their choice and autonomy. Others simply cannot come out for their own safety—or maybe they can come out to their friends, but not their family in a sort of double-life of half-freedom. I had a friend at university who was openly queer with her peers, but not with her family. She worked part-time while she studied, and was frugal. When we talked about her financial sitation she said she was saving up money in case her family ever found out she was LGBTQ+, and disowned her.

It feels important to include what happened on Monday as well as what happened on Sunday. There are happy coming out stories, there are painful ones. It’s true that things are a lot “better” than they used to be for LGBTQ+ people, especially in the UK where I live. But coming out is still a huge emotional burden that shouldn’t be underestimated. Like my writer friend Fiona said, ‘Yeah it’s 2021, but for some people in their heads its still the 1950s’.

So I haven’t done much work on my story this week. But I’ve been busy. I’ve been doing other, very important work. I’ve been busy self-soothing, trying to reframe my thoughts away from self-blame and attack to being proud of myself for how true to myself I am. I’ve been journalling and talking to friends. Also, swimming, a lot.

I feel lighter.  I am proud of myself for being curious about who I am. I am proud of myself for wanting to live authentically. I am proud of myself for being brave, for being honest. Indeed, a writer’s work is that of bravery and honesty so this journey through the Tunnel of Terror will only benefit my work, I’m sure of it.

As for me and my Dad? I came down this morning and he had my bike laid out across the kitchen table, replacing my brake pads. I’d vaguely mentioned this a week ago. So, maybe we will be okay. He’s helped me off the boat, and onto my bike.

[foolsimagines]

Can we have headcannons for Jotaro, Kakyoin, Josuke and Rohan with a S/O who's been diagnosed with terminal illness and only given a year left to live? How do they take the news, and what do they do to make them comfortable as they weaker and weaker?

My lort you’re gonna break me here dude :’c

(Also since this is so long I’m going to do Rohan and Jotaro now and write Josuke and Kakyoin later)

Tw Warning: Death

Rohan

When he first hears the news about their illness he’ll seem very cold, almost like he doesn’t really care. He’ll calmly ask the doctor what care they’ll need, how much time they have left, and if there’s any possible care options that could extend how much time they have, even if it’s by a little. When the doctor answers and says that they’ll have a year to live at the most, Rohan will visibly stiffen, but he’ll thank the doctor nonetheless, albeit with a slight tremble to his voice.  It isn’t until he and his s/o get home that he finally allows himself to break down. 

For the first few weeks after the diagnosis his s/o will barely even see him. He’ll just completely throw himself into his work, refusing to acknowledge what’s happening. It’ll take his s/o confronting him to realize how selfish he’s being and that whatever he’s going through, it must be much worse for his s/o who doesn’t have the luxury to ignore what’s happening to them. He’ll promise them he won’t avoid it anymore, and to prove it he’ll even put his manga on a hiatus.

While his s/o is still well enough to travel, if there’s any place they’ve ever dreamed of going he’ll take them no matter where it is. While they’re there he’ll buy them anything they could ever want and come with them to any touristy places they’d like. Even though he would usually complain over how crowded it is or how he’s already been there, he’ll actually keep his comments to himself to make sure he doesn’t ruin their fun.

He’d draw his s/o a lot more, no matter what they’re doing, whether they’re just sleeping or they’re watching tv he’d try and draw it all. He knows his time is limited with them so he wants to make sure he captures everything about them, all their expressions, their little quirks, anything that helps him make sure he’ll never forget  even the simplest of details about them.

Sometimes when he’s drawing them his thoughts will get away from him and he’ll start thinking about how little time they have left together. He won’t even notice he’s crying until there’s tear drops on the page and his s/o has to take the pen from his shaking grasp to hold him close.

At first as they start getting weaker he might snap a bit at them when they don’t have the energy or strength to do simple tasks anymore. It’s not that he’s actually angry at them, it’s just that now that time is running out he doesn’t want to believe that this is really happening. Until now while he knew they were dying, it never really sunk in that he’d have to watch as their body began to fail them, he never thought he’d have to watch them die.

When his s/o breaks down over what’s happening to them he’ll drop his confident act and bring them close for a hug. He’s not used to giving comfort so he’s overly stiff, but for once he doesn’t hold back on his affection. He’ll try his best to reassure them that they have plenty of time left together, though with the weaker they get it becomes more obvious that he’s trying to convince himself of that just as much as he’s trying to convince his s/o.

He’ll try to put it off as long as possible, but eventually there’s a point where his s/o will have to move into a hospice permanently. When that moment comes he’ll keep any time spent away from them to a minimum. If anyone ever tries to get him to leave, or is ever late with his s/o’s medication by even a minute they’ll have to suffer through Rohan’s bitching at them. Sometimes he’ll even bring out Heaven’s Door to make sure it won’t happen again.

Once it comes to the point where it’s obvious that his s/o has only days left he won’t even go home to shower or change clothes, he’ll practically just live at their bedside. It’s at this point that he can’t even bear to draw them anymore. As much as he loves them he doesn’t want to remember them like this, with tubes everywhere and looking so frail, like any touch could break them. If there’s any memory of them he just wishes he’d forget it’s when they become so weak that they can barely even lift up their head to greet him.

After their death Rohan will isolate himself more than ever before. If Koichi didn’t come to snap him out of it he likely would’ve even tried skipping his s/o’s funeral. It just hurts too much, he doesn’t want to acknowledge that they’re gone, he doesn’t want to have to watch the one he loved being put into the ground and just left there to rot. Some nights he even wishes he’d never met his s/o, though even when he’s in bed crying over the many sketchbooks and pictures he has of them he knows that’s not true.

Once his emotions have healed a bit, he’ll add a character to his manga that bears a striking resemblance to his s/o in both appearance and personality. It sort of helps him still feel connected to his s/o even if they’re gone. Whenever one of his fans writes to him about how much they love that character he can’t help but tear up a bit. He even has a special area for where he keeps all of the letters and fanart of them. He hopes that if everyone loves his s/o’s character then that means his s/o would’ve loved them too.

Jotaro

If it’s younger Jotaro, his first reaction towards the news is just pure anger and frustration, but since there’s no one he can really take it out on he’ll take it out on the doctor who delivered the news. He’ll just start yelling at them, demanding that they find a way to cure whatever it is that his s/o has. When the answer is that there’s nothing they can do, it’ll either take his s/o begging him to stop, or the doctor threatening to kick him out to get him to snap out of his rage. Once he realizes that yelling won’t help anyone he’ll immediately go to tend to his s/o.

If Jotaro’s older when he hears the news his reaction will be a lot less extreme. He’ll just let out a long sigh and pull on his cap a bit to cover his expression as he asks for the details. It still hurts, but he’s a lot more used to the feeling of grief after the death of so many of his friends. He knows that now is not the time to lose his head, that this is the time in which his s/o needs him the most.

No matter what age he is, Jotaro’s going to try and get a second opinion on the diagnoses. And then eventually a third opinion. It’s only after they’ve been to all the top doctors that the speedwagon foundation could afford that it’ll really sink in for him that there’s nothing he can do.

After everything’s calmed down, Jotaro will try and be a lot more open with his affection. Usually he wouldn’t be one for cuddles or good morning kisses, but now that he knows that their time together is limited he wants to be sure that his s/o knows how much he really does care for them, even if he might not show it all the time.

For a while Jotaro won’t ever let his s/o out of his sight. It won’t really be obvious at first, but soon his s/o will notice how every time they go out Jotaro will just sort of silently invite himself. He’s mainly just worried, he knows how ill they can get and he wants to be able to help them if anything goes wrong.

As his s/o grows weaker, he’ll use Star Platinum a lot more to help them with tasks around the house. He’ll basically have him out at all times, following his s/o around closely so he can help out any time he’s needed. 

Once it gets to the point where his s/o is too sick to be able to live at home, Jotaro will make sure to bring them to the best hospice he can find. He knows that the main reason they’re going there is to help keep his s/o as comfortable as possible during their last few days, so he’ll make sure the nurses always bring the best quality medicine to make sure that as his s/o passes they’ll feel no pain

Jotaro knew that having to watch his s/o die would hurt, but he never imagined how much. Having to deal with Kakyoin, Iggy, and Avdol’s deaths barely even compare, sure it still hurt, but they were gone in an almost an instant. Now he has to watch as his s/o’s body begins to shut down and watch as the point comes where they can’t even eat or bathe unassisted anymore. The fact that they barely even look like his s/o anymore, just a shell of their former self is what hurts him the most.

After their death, Jotaro will become even more reserved than he was before. Once they’re gone he’ll realize how much happiness and light they brought into his life and he’ll go into a deep depression. His smiles become nearly unheard of, and while his mom and Joseph try and have him let it all out, to talk about his s/o and remember the good times to help him heal, the only time he’ll really allow himself to think about them and break down are on those nights when he can’t manage to sleep now that his s/o’s side of the bed feels so empty.

If a group of girls ever try following him and flirting with him again he’ll react a lot more angrily than he even did in his youth. He won’t yell, but he’ll immediately snap at them and glare to the point where even the most persistent of girls know they should back off. It just really pisses him off that any of them think they could ever replace his s/o in his heart, no matter how much time has passed since their death.

[petrichorate]

The Bell Jar: Thoughts

The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

The Bell Jar was a beautiful, clear novel. The whole time, I felt very close to the main character, Esther. Even while Esther sat steeped in depression, Sylvia Plath’s writing made me feel like Esther was the sane one in the book; her breakdown seems completely understandable, compared to fatuous demeanors and inconsequential mannerisms of everyone else in her world. 

I loved the style of the writing—simple, lucid, embedded with the most beautiful and effortless descriptions that made me think, “Yes, that feels real.” 

Here are some passages that particularly struck me:

On expectations and feeling very numb in the middle of a chaotic life: “Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. (I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo).”

On ordering alcohol: “I thought I might make a fool of myself by saying I’d have it with ice or soda or gin or anything. I’d seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full of vodka standing in the middle of a snowdrift in a blue light and the vodka looked clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right. My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful.”

On looking during crucial situations: “I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I never forgot it.  I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time.”

On third wheeling: “The two of them didn’t even stop jitterbugging during the intervals. I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground. There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.”

On silence in New York City: “By standing at the left side of the window and laying my cheek to the woodwork, I could see downtown to where the UN balanced itself in the dark, like a weird green Martian honeycomb. I could see the moving red and white lights along the drive and the lights of the bridges whose names I didn’t know. The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.  I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn’t hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.”

On hot baths: “There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: ‘I’ll go take a hot bath.’”

On physics class: “Botany was fine, because I loved cutting up leaves and putting them under the microscope and drawing diagrams of bread mold and the odd, heart-shaped leaf in the sex cycle of the fern, it seemed so real to me. The day I went into physics class it was death. A short dark man with a high, lisping voice, named Mr. Manzi, stood in front of the class in a tight blue suit holding a little wooden ball. He put the ball on a steep grooved slide and let it run down to the bottom. Then he started talking about let a equal acceleration and let t equal time and suddenly he was scribbling letters and numbers and equals signs all over the blackboard and my mind went dead.”

An interesting take on colors in Technicolor movies: “I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction.”

On solid floors: “I listened with interest. The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.”

On expectations and disappointment: “I went cold with envy. I had never been to Yale, and Yale was the place all the seniors in my house liked to go best on weekends. I decided to expect nothing from Buddy Willard. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”

On childbirth and men: “Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she’d had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn’t know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”

The fig tree passage on indecision: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

On the ordinariness that comes after love: “I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him. The same thing happened over and over: I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all. That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”

On married life: “I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.  It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he’d left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he’d expect a big dinner, and I’d spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.”

On dating versus marriage: “And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat. Hadn’t my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon—my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce—my father said to her, ‘Whew, that’s a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves’?—and from that day on my mother never had a minute’s peace.”

On having someone’s hand run through your hair: “He didn’t answer but reached over and put his hand at the root of my hair and ran his fingers out slowly to the tip ends like a comb. A little electric shock flared through me and I sat quite still. Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.”

Esther’s mom’s response to Esther’s depression: “‘I’m through with that Doctor Gordon,’ I said, after we had left Dodo and her black station wagon behind the pines. ‘You can call him up and tell him I’m not coming next week.’ My mother smiled. ‘I knew my baby wasn’t like that.’ I looked at her. ‘Like what?’ ‘Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.’ She paused. ‘I knew you’d decide to be all right again.’”

On snapping and getting annoyed at friends: “Being with Jody and Mark and Cal was beginning to weigh on my nerves, like a dull wooden block on the strings of a piano. I was afraid that at any moment my control would snap, and I would start babbling about how I couldn’t read and couldn’t write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.”

On the difficulty of appreciating anything when you’re depressed: “I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

A beautiful description of morning time: “I woke warm and placid in my white cocoon. A shaft of pale, wintry sunlight dazzled the mirror and the glasses on the bureau and the metal doorknobs. From across the hall came the early-morning clatter of the maids in the kitchen, preparing the breakfast trays.”

A nice description about snow clearing away calendars: “A fresh fall of snow blanketed the asylum grounds—not a Christmas sprinkle, but a man-high January deluge, the sort that snuffs out schools and offices and churches, and leaves, for a day or more, a pure, blank sheet in place of memo pads, date books and calendars.”

On how expressions can change because of experiences: “‘I’ve been wondering... I mean, I thought you might be able to tell me something.’ Buddy met my eyes and I saw, for the first time, how he had changed. Instead of the old, sure smile that flashed on easily and frequently as a photographer’s bulb, his face was grave, even tentative—the face of a man who often does not get what he wants.”

[abbyfic-updates]

Just Take My Hand - Chapter 4

Author Notes: This is the next chapter in the story on AO3. I’ve rewritten this one the most of any one I’ve been currently working on. I’m honestly happier but not content with it.

Characters: Jason Todd, OC, and Richard Dragon

Jason wasn’t sure how far he had walked. Honestly, he hadn’t cared where his feet had been taking him. Neither snow nor cold bothered him. Now though, something had his attention. Out of the corner of his eye, a green, fluorescent light flickered. The bright glow was a sharp contrast to the blur of snowflakes.

Drawing in a deep, cold breath, his lungs burned and constricted. He forced himself to cough, but it wasn’t the icy wind that stole his breath away. No. It was the name written out in vibrant neon green over a pair of large wooden doors.

The Jaded Stone Dragon

Stepping towards a double pane, lightly frosted window beside the doors, Jason glanced inside. Booths partially lined one side of a rather narrow space. A few round tables dotted here and there along the center. On the other side, a bar counter stretched nearly the entire length. Only a few people were inside.

Jason’s gaze drifted away from the window for a moment. Shivers raked over his back. They were reason enough not to stay outside any longer. No matter how much he wanted to be alone, he didn’t want to freeze to death either.

“But do I go inside or head back... to the motel?” Over his shoulder, Jason squinted into the blowing snow.

Jason knew what going inside could mean. For starters, he knew he'd be carded. That was the trouble of dying young. No one believed him about his age. Someone always commented. Twice he had decked a guy for calling him baby-faced. Worse then that were the women. Near the front he spotted a group of three women. At least one looked drunk. He had stopped counting the number of times some drunk woman had tried to coax him out of his seat with a giggle or sweet word to his ear. He usually didn’t mind flirting, but he wasn’t in the mood tonight. He just wanted to be alone with a beer.

A sigh fell from his lips. "Then, there's Cassandra. What's the chance she'll leave me alone for the rest of the night?"

Jason was almost certain that she would be waiting for him by now. He could picture her standing in the snow, looking about for him. She might even be worried. Then again, she might have gone to their motel room and was currently fuming. He had left without a word. Wincing slightly, he considered facing her wraith. She was terrifying when she was mad.

With a quick shake of his head, Jason made a snap decision. "No." He stepped towards the double doors. “I’m just not ready to go back. Not yet.” Grabbing one of the brass handles, he started to pull open the heavy door. “Maybe after a beer or two.”

As Jason crossed the threshold into the bar, he hesitated briefly. He couldn’t help but take in the new his surroundings and those inside.

For a small-town bar, it was rustic but not in that new, modern design. From the chips in the wood to the lighter looking wood panels along the bar, the building was showing its true age. Yet, it wasn’t some rundown, smoke filled mess. Real care had been taken to make the space feel comfortable and inviting to visitors.

Speaking of the people, most sat in the booths on the left side. Furthest away,  a small group of rowdy college guys were singing drunkenly to some pop song on a nearby jukebox. A bit closer were a pair of winter-ready hunters, talking in hushed voices. The closest was a family of four. They were eating in silence, except for the blue eyed, babbling toddler who kept looking in Jason’s direction with a big smile.

When another shiver raked down his spine, Jason let the door close behind him. It made a loud thud. Only a couple customers spared him a glance. Even then, it was so brief that no one, outside a student of Batman, would probably have noticed.

One of them was one of the three women seated at the front table. She was a short haired brunette who seemed a bit tipsy. When she attempted to wave at Jason, she nearly knocked over a bottle of red wine. Jason just frowned and strode past without a second glance. Instead, he headed towards the bar.

The rest of the customers were seated at the bar. There was a couple holding hands on the elongated side of the bar. Neither of them gave Jason a look. On the shorter end, there was a pair of older looking men dressed in dark gray business suits. The blond, broad shouldered one spared Jason only the briefest of glances. He was busy, trying to calm down his inebriated friend.

Moving down to the other end of the bar, Jason pulled off his backpack. As he sat down, he placed his bag on the stool next to him. Drawing in a long and deep breath, he tried to calm himself. His nerves were still on edge. His mind still tittering between depressing thoughts and his present mission. "Keep it together," he breathed. His words felt empty. A cold, tall one would be a far better cure. Maybe more than one.

When he heard the door behind the bar swing open, Jason glanced up. He half expected to see some bosomy woman with a flirty smirk curving a pair of bright red lips or some overly friendly, stout man with a glint of nosiness to his eyes. Jason saw neither. Instead, a towering broad shouldered man, carrying two trays of empty beer mugs, stepped out. Jason swore he might be taller than Bruce had been.

Despite Jason's gaping expression, the towering man seemed oblivious to him at first. His deep, brown eyes were sharply focused down the the bar in the direction of the other pairs. The intensity of his gaze was only matched by the shear brightness of his fiery red, receding hairline. He didn't speak a word, but Jason could tell he wasn't happy about something.

Carefully setting down the two trays on the counter behind the bar, the red haired man purposefully strode down to the other end of the bar. He stopped in front of the two men in suits.

The taller of the two suited men suddenly straightened up.

Then, his inebriated friend pushed himself up to reach across the bar counter towards the red haired man. As he little too loudly spoke, his words were slightly slurred. "Ah! Rich! Therre youu arrre. I ne anothr..."

Placing a hand on his friend's outstretched arm, the taller man interrupted him. "Now, Marty, just hold..."

Whatever words he had intended to say seemed to die on his tongue when the towering man - Rich - placed his hands down on the bar in front of both of them. "I think you've had enough. Don't you agree, Rob?"

Even from his seat Jason could see the taller man - Rob - swallow nervously. His eyes widened. "Well, yes. You're probably..." He hesitated for a second before finishing his sentence. "Right." He stood up, looking already to go, despite not having his coat on.

Marty, his friend, looked the complete opposite, leaning against the bar with a mischievous smirk. "No."

Leaning forward, Rich continued to speak but in a hushed voice. Jason couldn't hear what he said, but he heard a grunts of agreement from the taller of the suited men. 

Then, he saw Marty suddenly lean back with a shocked expression. "Wwwwhy?" His question sounded more a like a whine as Rob grabbed both his and Marty's coats.

"Sorry again, Rich."

"Whaaaa?!" the shorter man said questioning. "But I... no..."

After the taller man put on his coat, he grabbed his friend's closest arm and pulled him to his feet. Grabbing a wad of cash, the taller suited man dropped it on the counter. "Night, Rich." Then, he dragged his inebriated friend towards the exit.

All the way, Jason could hear Marty protesting, until the door shut behind them.

Rich did not move from his leaning position at the end of the counter. Instead, he watched the pair exit and pass by the frosted window. Jason saw a cold seriousness to Rich's eyes, which got Jason to start rethinking his decision to not head back to the motel. He was in no mood to deal with a grumpy bartender.

"Um. Excuse, sir." Jason saw the young girl from the other couple at the bar speak to Rich. Jason cringed, expecting a piercing glare. Instead, when the gaze shifted, there was genuine warmth and friendliness. Jason just blinked. Still taking in the short series of events, Jason entirely missed the friendly exchange, until he heard the shared laughter.

Jason raised an eyebrow and considered the fiery red haired man named Rich. He did not look the type to run a family friend bar. He had the body of a bodybuilder with a bit of gut showing through his tight fitting shirt. His fiery red hair suggested European roots to him, but Jason swore he picked up an accent with inflections that seemed of Asian influence.  With a small bemused smile, Jason silently teased Rich. He liked how his hair seemed to be gradually becoming his thick, red beard. Of course, Jason resisted the urge to verbalize his comment to the man. Rather, when RIch finally met his gaze, Jason forced his smile away and gave a short nod.

Rich seemed to blink at him for a few seconds. His face grew serious, but there was no sternness or anger as Jason saw before with the suited men. Neither was there a warmth and friendliness. Slowly, the red haired man approached Jason.

“Hey,” Jason said, sitting up straight. He was vainly hoping to make himself look bigger. “I could go for a beer. Whatever’s on tap should be fine.”

Stopping in front of him, Rich rested his large hands on the edge of the bar. For a long moment, he did not respond to Jason. He appeared to be appraising him.

Pushing out his shoulder a bit wider, Jason dropped his voice even lower, doing his best Batman imitation. "Though, I prefer cold, if you have it."

A single red eyebrow rose up as if in question. His lips were tightly drawn as if he was considering the question that his eyebrows had asked. “I'm sure you could... Son, but I’m going to have to see some identification first.”

His shoulders sunk, despite himself. Rolling his eyes, Jason muttered about dying young again. Reaching into the backpack, he pulled out the fake ID that Cassandra had given him before leaving Gotham. As he dug through the backpack for it, he felt the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stand up straight.

Jason furrowed his brow. He looked at the man who was still looking intently at him. Then, he spared a quick glance about the room again. Everyone was still seated where he’d last seen them, and no one was even glancing in their direction. Still, something didn't feel right. A small voice in his head started to whisper that it wasn't safe here, that danger was close. Jason tried to ignore the voice in his head telling to him leave. He pulled out his ID and slid it across the counter.

There was a beat of a pause before the man took his ID from the counter. When he looked back, he noticed the man’s eyes were now wide and his head was tilted as if scrutinizing Jason. His gaze was narrowed and the muscles his shoulders looked like they had tightened. In the blink of an eye, he turned his gaze away from Jason and to the ID that he had picked up.

Leaning forward, Jason drew in a long breath, pinched the bridge of his nose, and waited for some comment like always.

"Jason," the man said as if sounding it out. "Not from around here, I see, but... Gotham... and..." There was a pause as if the man considered saying something.

"What?" Jason spat out the question as he drew in another long breath. He waited for Rich to speak, but there was no response. Jason sighed. “Look, can I just have a beer.” He lifted his gaze.

Rich held Jason’s license in one hand, but his gaze locked solely on Jason. Those dark eyes were wide, almost shell-shocked. He noticed the man’s throat tightened for a second, before he coughed loudly. Then, he coughed into the back of his hand. Then, he said in a tight sounding voice, “Sure thing, Kid. Just... just stay right here. Okay? Don't go anywhere."

A mixed snort of amusement and irritation fell from Jason's lips. "Why would I?" The small voice in his head reminded him about the possible danger, but he didn't share that with Rich.

Nodding slowly, Rich backed up from Jason. "Good. Stay put. I'll be right back.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jason watched the man vanish behind a swinging door. A heavy sigh finally fell from his lips. He lowered his gaze again.

He was still mad at himself for letting his emotions get the best of him. He was supposed to be focusing on this mission from Bruce. He was suppose to be helping Cassandra. Yet, here he was running off, dwelling on a dead past. It was pointless. It was childish. He couldn’t believe he’d even let those thoughts cloud his judgment. He much rather the alcohol in his glass do the clouding.

Then, he felt a hand clasp his left shoulder. He tensed instantly but did not immediately turn. Rather, he spotted the person in the mirror in front. It was one of those college guys in the black hoodies. Jason noticed he was peering down at his photo id on the counter. Then just as quickly as he looked his gaze focused forward. In a slightly slurred voice, he said, "Awww man! Just missed Rich?! I needed another pitcher. Can you believe that, Dude?"

Turning slightly towards him, Jason looked at the hand on his shoulder and then, looked up at the college guy. He had a sloppy smile on his face and a glazed over look in his eyes. "Why didn't you hold him a bit longer, Kid?"

Jason's eyes narrowed. "Name's not Kid." Then he brushed the hand off his shoulder.

With a bemused smile, the college guy leaned forward. "Yeah, according to your ID, but we know how real that is, right?" He chuckled as if it was some shared joke.

Jason did not even smile. He just glowered at the  college guy, hoping he'd take the hint.

The college guy didn't. Rather, he looked over his shoulder towards his table and in a loud voice stated, "I mean, it says your veteran, but we all know that's crap."

Jason picked up his photo ID and saw what the college guy was referring to. It did in fact list him as a veteran. That was probably Cassandra's way of hinting at his history. She sure was obessessed with his past. All her questions about him, and she decided to reference it on his ID. Probably not a good idea, at least in hind sight. He blew out a breath and pocketed his ID into his pants pocket.

When he heard new footsteps approaching, Jason turned to face them. Now, there were three of the college guys much to Jason's frustration. Instead of losing his cool or just walking out, he tightened one hand into a fist and asked ,"Oh, and why's that? Think I look too young?"

With a snort of amusement, one of the college guy's friend - towering, broad shouldered guy who probably was the school quarterback, stated, "No, too wimpy and lanky. Army thugs have more muscle. Like me." He actually pulled up both his hoodie's sleeves and flexed with a broad grin on his face.

Jason gawked briefly at the three college guys who were now cheering each other on. No one had called him lanky since he was a teen. True, he was wearing an overly large hoodie, probably a size bigger than normal, but he didn't think he looked that small in it. That irritated him.

Just then Jason realized dealing with this irritation might just be the distraction he needed. Maybe this was just a good excuse, and he might be able to do it without leading to a brawl and upsetting Rich like the two suited men had done.

"Not bad, but how do I know you aren't all show?" Jason asked with a teasing glint to his eyes.

Instantly, the towering, broad shouldered college guy frowned. "Whadda you mean, Kid?"

"Jason." He corrected the guy. "And what I mean is how about you prove just how much stronger you are."

Looking among each other, the college guys shared a confused look. Then, the shortest of them asked, "How so?"

"Arm wrestle me, I mean if you're sure you can beat me," Jason suggested.

There was a snort from another college guy who had walked over. "Of course, he can. We all could, Kid."

"Prove it. I'll even make it interesting." He pulled the few dollars he had in his pants pocket. Slapping down two twenties, he raised an eyebrow at the guy. "That is if you're sure you are stronger than me."

They all exchanged looks. Then, the first college guy pulled out another two twenties. "You are on, Kid. And if you can beat all three of us, I'll triple the beat. Whadda you say?"

Flexing his fingers, Jason just smiled. "Hope you'll have enough cab fair to get home after I've won."

To be continued...